Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Ian, Jenny, John, Jonathan, Laura, Lesley.
Apologies: Gill, Harry, Kaz, Michele, Pip, Suzanne.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
John announce that his novel Painted Jack has gone to press, its publication to be announced in a month or two.
Ian told the meeting that writers and illustrators have their own trade union: the Society of Authors. He passed around for inspection their quarterly The Author. The latest edition debates the negative impact of AI on writers, especially language translators. This triggered an intense impromptu discussion on the topic of AI.
Members’ Readings
John —
continued reading from his novel in-progress: Bugle Blast, set in the late 18th century. The 1st-person narrator is an 8 year old boy describing life in his weavers’ village in the shadow of Pendle Hill, and how it changes with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. The cycle of the seasons brings the Irish itinerant fruit pickers. The narrator’s mother dies slowly from consumption, and as the doctor’s treatment fails her, the community falls back on traditional superstitions for a remedy.
Ian —
continued reading from Chota Sahib, his uncle Charles’s memoir of being a box-wallah (travelling salesman) in India at the start of WW1. The hero visits Pune (then called Poona) hoping for good business at the famed Musketry School. The exhausted officers get a little boisterous with the contents of his boxes, but their C.O. calls them to order, and the day ends profitably.
Adele —
read a monologue, written for a writers’ workshop, about what passes through the mind of a fictional out-patient undergoing MRI at James Cook hospital in Middlesbrough. The procedure is stressful, bordering on violence, the patient being constrained inside a noisy machine and commanded to keep still for 45 minutes. The speaker is tormented by an itchy nose (“if I twitch they’ll have to start again!”) and has plenty of time to wonder what she has done to deserve such punishment. It brings back memories of the domestic violence suffered at the hands of her ex, who is himself currently being investigated for cancer.
Laura —
read from a diary she keeps about her experiences as an opinion pollster, and the people she interviews in the street. At a festival in Stockton she meets someone who knew the instigator of the recent riot in Middlesbrough. In the course of her work she gets to hear about, and may herself witness, illegal acts. This raises the ethical question about how far she should intervene, or report on what she has seen and heard. This prompted an interesting discussion among members, with comparisons being made with wildlife photography (should the TV team come to the aid of a dying animal?), plus other occupations (like judging dog-shows, or being a box-wallah) which afford a unique (and marketable) perspective on the human animal as observed “in the wild”.
Jenny —
has returned to her period novel in-progress based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields. Mary now has five children, but leaves it to her hard-working household to care for them, evincing no interest in their upbringing, in contrast to her husband Lord Strathmore who romps with them like a child himself. She believes the more children she has, the less he will love her.
Bored with country life, she not only takes lovers from neighbouring estates, but tries her hand at novel writing, publishing The Siege of Jerusalem. She is so enraged at overhearing Strathmore’s brother Thomas joking with his new wife about it that she presses her husband to challenge Thomas to a duel. Hoping to see them wound each other with sword or pistol, she is disappointed when they opt to wrestle, a good-natured pastime they’ve indulged in from boyhood. However the exertion causes Lord Strathmore to cough up blood, revealing a lung condition for which the doctor prescribes Portugal for its hot dry climate. Lord S sets out, never to reach his destination, having urged the household to swear to serve Mary as faithfully as they have served him.
Mary, liberated from the Strathmore household, resumes the high life in London, aborting a pregnancy from a lover she takes there.
The meeting closed at 1:05 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 